The magical mystery tour

This week it was time to get out and find some long solved mystery caches.

Yes, I’m talking about those gleaming blue dots on the geocaching map which are often the very last to be turned yellow.

I have lost track of the number of hours I’ve spent trying to find those hidden co-ordinates on cache pages. Not being one to admit defeat and ask for help, I have literally spent months and even years contemplating how to solve some mystery caches. But when I do eventually get those hard to find co-ordinates the sense of achievement and self pride is immense.  

However, despite all this work I’m a bit of a beggar for not going to find the final cache. I currently have over 300 caches in a 40 miles radius of home sitting in my solved list! And to my horror this week I realised a few of those have been archived recently.

With a new found determination to actually start ticking some off the list I headed to Kingston - not the one in Jamaica - in South Cambridgeshire to tackle the Quizzical Smile series. 

The 19 caches in the series make up a huge smiley face on the geocaching map and most were fairly simple to solve thanks to the answer options given by the CO on each cache page. 

The walk was really nice, the first part along a wide country track, that I had never walked before. The caches were all pretty similar, small pots, but all were in good order and all found but one. 

As I reached the far end of the first stretch I could huge black clouds in front of me and a few loud claps of thunder. Unsure of which direction it was going, I decided I probably would be ok to grab some caches on RYO62’s linear trail Halloween Haunt. 

It was a really fun trail, most of the caches made me laugh and it was really nice walking through the woodland and then along the edge of it.

After bagging creative caches attached to a bat, a skeleton, a stick and a wooden log, the rain suddenly hit. Taking shelter amongst some trees I began to look for number five, but after 10 minutes searching under the dripping trees, I had no luck.

As quick as it started the rain stopped, but the thunder continued to roll, and I could still feel a light spray from the edge of the storm. I decided to head for number six as quickly as possible and was relieved to make a quick find of another skeleton. 

As I walked back to the second leg of the Quizzical Smile series the storm remained alongside me and I continued to feel the light spray and see lightening. 

Fortunately I was soon heading back across the fields towards Kingston and made it back to the village before the storm circled round. 

I just had time to grab another long solved mystery from the former Hatley Heart Attack series, plus a cache at the beautiful old water pump. 

I also picked up brilliant ‘Chirp is not enough’ cache, which was just brilliant. I’d not done a chirp before and this was good fun. The final cache...an ammo can disguised as a flight data recorder box was amazing. I loved it.

A few nights later and I set off on another after work caching trip. This time I was heading west towards Girton, but did stop a couple of times on the way. 

The first was at the beautiful Kings College, where I picked up the Cambridge Postcard virtual with a quick selfie.

Next was the very long solved mystery cache ‘What the Dickens’. I’d solved it over several nights travelling home by train. The theme was instantly familiar and after an awful lot of googling to put all the pieces of this great puzzle together I finally had the co-ordinates. At GZ the cache was safe and well and soon spotted.

In Girton I parked up not far from the local shop and headed off to find the caches on the southern loop of the Girton Corner series, which I’d failed to pick up on my previous visit.

It was a nice walk on tarmac paths and the caches and hides were just as good as those on the northern loop. 

The log and strawberry were particularly good. There were also a few high ones placed on signs, but my extendable tool soon grabbed them. 

The final caching trip of the week was to Isleham to find a few more of the inventive caches in the Priory Preambulation series by FolkFen.

They included two multis, one of which had one of the best nano caches I’ve seen at the final GZ...a magnetic green caterpillar. 

I also picked up FolkFen’s latest FF mystery puzzle, which was based on a TV programme I have never watched, but again, thanks to google I found what needed to get the final co-ordinates. At GZ I soon uncovered the nice on theme cache. 

Next week we’ll be out finding more long solved mystery caches and finally achieving a goal we’ve been trying to achieve for quite some time...years and years almost! 

And on that note I’m off to see the very talented Years and Years at the races and hopefully make a quid or two on the horse racing. Wish me luck.